Ixcanul

Ixcanul (, Kaqchikel for "volcano") is a 2015 Guatemalan drama film written and directed by Jayro Bustamante in his directorial debut. It was screened in the main competition section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Alfred Bauer Prize. The film was selected as the Guatemalan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but was not nominated. It is the first film produced in the Kaqchikel language of the Mayan family.

==Plot== The film is set in a village on the flank of an active volcano, where Maria and her parents cultivate coffee. The Kaqchikel villagers, like other Mayans, practice a mixture of Catholicism and the traditional Maya religion, worshiping the Christian God while also making offerings to the goddess that they believe lives in the volcano. Maria has never been beyond the volcano and the village is her world. She has been promised to the plantation foreman, Ignacio, in marriage, but desires a younger plantation worker, who wants to emigrate to the United States. Pepe paints to Maria a picture of the US as a land of plenty and promise, a place where the people enjoy a level of affluence that is unthinkable in Guatemala. When she asks him if he would take her with him, he says he might if she has sex with him although he also says that it is a difficult journey, over a desert and rivers.